Getting things up and running

To get the Raspberry Pi Camera Module up and running, we first need to do a few things beginning with making sure the operating system on your Pi is updated to the latest version. To do this simply make sure your Pi is connected to the internet, and then enter the console and run the command listed below.

sudo apt-get update

This should take a few minutes to complete. When it is finished, we need to run the update by entering the command listed below.

sudo apt-get upgrade -y

You will need to enter your root user's password here and the upgrade may take some time to complete. Just sit back and relax while things complete. Once it is finished, we can move on to preparing the Pi for the camera module. This will require running a few more command strings in the console.

The first command we need to run will install the git-core package. Enter the command below to start this action.

sudo apt-get install git-core -y

Now we need to download the "rpi-update" script, which is accomplished by entering the following command.

When that is finished we will need to change the permissions in the "rpi-update" script so that we can run it. To do this, we need to run a simple chmod command.

sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/rpi-update

Finally we need to execute the "rpi update" script. Enter the command below to start the update process. This will take several minutes to complete, so do not unplug or power down your Pi, as the result would be having to start all over again.

sudp rpi-update

Were almost finished! Now we need to update the boot configuration file by adding the following lines to the bottom of file using the command: sudo nano /boot/config.txt

start_file=start_x.elf

fixup_file=fixup_x.dat

You will also need to make sure that the GPU memory allocation was set to 128 MB by looking for a line like this below.

gpu_mem=128

If it is not present, add it to the bottom of the file as well. Save the changes and keep the file name exactly as it was.